Immigrant dad sounds off on 'woke' school agendas 'dumbing down' students

[BadHippie]

@Consept

Well as someone living in Germany I can say one thing for sure... Learning about Naziism in school in such a one-sided manner teaches you nothing.

We are currently heading down a road which has a lot of aspects in common with the beginning of how Hitler got to power. What people in Germany and I aswell learned in school was kinda that we should be ashamed to be Germans. I never considered myself a German, even though I was born here, but when I was younger that's what I believed as well. 

My take on critical race theory is that it depends on how you teach it. What this critical race theory is doing in most cases, is making people focus on race. At least that's what I see here in Germany from a lot of my friends. 

What would be more important is people starting to see each other as subjects, instead of putting labels on them. Like you don't even need to know the concept of race to love all people if you know that we are all human.

Why not teach a theory that focuses on what we all have in common, instead of how we differ? 

[Talinn]

@Leo Gurabans when?

[Consept]

3 hours ago, BadHippie said:

Well as someone living in Germany I can say one thing for sure... Learning about Naziism in school in such a one-sided manner teaches you nothing.

So how do you propose Naziism should be taught? Did you want to learn about the good they they did or the bad that the Jews did, what do you mean by one sided?

[Danioover9000]

@Ferretab

On 16/08/2021 at 10:23 AM, Ferretab said:

Hi.

A dangerous ideology has penetrated American schools through "woke" professors.

I've found a great YouTube video about this topic:

I didn't expect Fox News to air an immigrant dad, so congratulations to them.

We have to be against any ideology whatsoever, right-wing or left-wing.

I enjoy learning from immigrants, as they know the low-life conditions of less developed nations.

   This is not surprising. A person who seems to have come from a culture with a mix of stage purple/red/blue values, reacts badly to a school that teaches stuff with stage orange/green values to his own children. For a parent that is more traditional in programming, that fear is genuine.

   Yes, no ideology of any kind. The easiest way to be dogmatic is to ignore this one rule. Already people are getting a bit ideological in this thread. Come on, self actualizers, rise above it.

   At this point, anyone who has a similar view is aired is good for their programming, although you're right it's surprising.

   Depending on how morally, cognitively and consciously developed you are, along with how much experience you have in a domain of life, increases your open mindedness.

    

[Eph75]

Schools need to be a function that extends child development as a preparation for adult life, in a deliberate way, by creating an environment where the focus is on just that, catalyzing development, and not the transferring of ideology, so that the children can enter their adult life with great tools and heightened chances to flourish in life.

That includes preparing children with critical fundamental and in depth knowledge and skill such as language, logic and math, science and most of all to be able to critically view and to think for themselves based on that they critically observe. 

Once you bring in ideological messaging into schools you divert from this and push separete agenda. You're consciously adding bias onto the critical viewing. 

The most damaging effect is that it takes away from being able to think for themselves, something that all ideology contributes to and its a set of pre-determined beliefs that you get served on a silver plate ready to be swallowed. And it shifts effort away from time spent focusing on critical knowledge and skill. 

Children are in a natural developmental phase where their minds are easily shaped so transferring any ideology is going to be fairly easy. So there is an element of deliberateness to wanting to bring value shaping elements into school environments. 

You can interpret and read into this as being against everything that a given ideology says, but that's not it and that's adding biased meaning on top of what I'm saying.

It's not negating whatever good or bad messaging is packaged into that ideology. It's just negating a second agenda in favor of developmental growth and critical learning. 

From this perspective, this dad is pointing towards wanting his children to exit with great knowledge and great prospect of doing great things based on that knowledge. And the ideological content that takes focus away from this will lower the standards of the fundamental teaching and the results that desired level of knowledge is depending on.

He of course is coming from a certain position which causes him to react, and he himself might be imposing ideology onto his children and finding this is interfering with that. But that's also besides the point of above. 

The balancing act for school leadership and teachers becomes the inclusion of high sense of morale to such a degree that it does include humanism in terms of openness to individuality and respect towards choice of expression, without specifically pushing any branch of individuality as favored. 

Quite a challenging balancing act. 

[DieFree]

Why would you be surprised that Fox News would invite a minority who opposes efforts to help minorities and rectify social injustices? They've been doing that for decades now.

My perspective is that American schools should do a much better job teaching the three Rs - arithmetic, writing, and reading - but it's not an either or situation. They can teach those, and teach them well, while also having a robust curriculum that opens the eyes of students to the very real injustices, much of it based on race, gender, and sexuality, that continue to plague American society and ruin us all with their impact. 

[Johnny Galt]

@DieFree How about the injustices of forcing humans to "learn" (compulsory education)? 13 years we are led along to do as you're told and to identify as the group - how is this good for minorities? how does this honour the uniqueness of the individuals of those who are classified as a minority?